IMPORTER.

Interview by free-lance writer Norma LibmanCHICAGO TRIBUNE

Name: Toby Lee

Background: Lee, 30, earned a bachelor's degree in architecture from the University of Illinois and worked in that field for three years. While a student, he traveled in South America for eight months and developed an interest in South American textiles and folk crafts. This led to the startup of an importing business, Little Journeys, which he operates with his wife, Ronnie Berk.

Years as an importer: 2

My wife and I were studying textiles and South American native folklore and collecting historical weavings for quite some time before we decided to start an import business.

To find the products we want to import, we start by determining where certain weavings or crafts are made, and then we travel there. Sometimes we may walk several days to get to a village. When we get there, we often don't know where we are, since there is often nothing on the map.

Sometimes the people don't speak Spanish, which we speak, and we don't speak their Indian language, so we usually find a child who has been educated and speaks Spanish to act as our translator. Then we find out who's interested in parting with their weavings or carvings or whatever.

In the cities, we can find artisans quite easily. Usually there is a little plaza in the center of town. I will go to the plaza and sit there and tell a few people what I'm looking for. Later in the day there will be somebody out there to look for me. If they feel comfortable, they take me back to their houses, or we'll set up a time, and they'll meet me at the hotel. Then we may strike up a business deal.

Part of my job is to determine the quality of the items I import. When I see something that someone has made, I can actually tell if the people are enjoying their work and thinking about what they're doing, because then the work is of good quality.

After you've seen enough goods, you get to know that certain things are better than others. For instance, with sweaters, the first thing I check is the underarm, because that's where the first rip will occur. With weaving, they spin and dye all their own yarn, so I check the quality of the colors and the spinning. When yarn is not spun right, it will start to unspin and get loose and tear. You need experience, and you have to pay attention to all the details.

In La Paz, Bolivia, there's a street where all the vendors congregate. When you go there, a guy will come up to you with a weaving and tell you that it's 200 years old and worth $300. But the item could be 10 years old and worth $15. So you have to know what you're looking for. These people can detect a tourist from miles away.

It's important to build trust in this business. Some artisans will send work on consignment, and if they don't trust you, they won't send. I dealt with one woman who read coca leaves to determine if her business negotiations were going to work out well. When I started to work with her, she read the leaves and said we needed to go slowly in our negotiations. Then we all had to make a toast to the deal, and that was done with Coca-Cola. You have to do business the way they do business.

The most difficult thing is learning to understand their time frame, which is completely different from ours. I'll make an appointment for Thursday at 10, and they'll show up on Friday at 6. And there's no way to contact them. So sometimes I do a lot of waiting. But I have to tell them that if they promise me sweaters for August for our winter season, and they don't deliver until October, we can't make any money, and they won't make any money. We have to work with them and teach them the importance of delivering on time.

The other side of this job is selling the goods when they arrive in Chicago. We sell to a lot of galleries and boutiques in the city and suburbs and elsewhere in the country. The prices we set depend on the age, availability and distinctiveness of the items.

Sometimes gallery owners come to us, because there is usually too much to take to them from a shipment. We will send a box of samples to a store in San Francisco, for instance, and the store will buy what we've sent and order more. If they don't like what we've sent, they just send it back.

A typical day might include making a call to Bolivia to search for a package, calling stores to see who needs to reorder their stock, visiting stores or planning for the next season. I spend a lot of time on the phone with both local and long-distance calls.

Traveling to South America, going to places that no one really knows about and trying to deal with people you can't communicate with are what I like most about this job. The people that I deal with, both here and in South America, are so interesting.

There is so much to learn, especially from the older people in Bolivia and Peru. The old Indians living on farms who build their houses from bricks made of mud, who have a pile of llama dung in the corner of their living room to use for fuel, the weavings that they wear-all this really opens my eyes to what life used to be like.

At the same time, much of what I don't like is connected to traveling in these countries too. Lima, the capital of Peru, is just a madhouse. It's dangerous, it's chaotic, it's dirty, there's so much poverty. I really feel vulnerable when I'm there.

There are great risks in some places. In one town, Ayacucho (Peru), which is the center of a guerrilla area called "The Shining Path," I heard gunshots during the night. I was there for two days, and that was enough for me. There was just too much tension.

In Bolivia, the roads are terrible, and the transportation is difficult. I'll never forget one 18-hour ride in the back seat of an old bus with the dust rolling in the windows, (with us) trying to sleep in our sleeping bags in the freezing temperatures of the very high altitude of the mountains. I wouldn't want to do that again. It's just too grueling. And sometimes the food really gets to you too.

You have to be creative to succeed in this business. When things don't go smoothly, you have to be ready to change your plans, and you have to always be looking for ways to keep the products interesting. My wife and I come from artistic backgrounds, and that gives us an edge-in judging the goods and in being able to talk to gallery owners.

But most of all, you have to be patient. That will get you through the two hours of waiting out in the middle of nowhere and having to sleep on the road and all the rest of it.